


the cause and effect when life interferes

by 26stars



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Daisy reacting to Fitz's death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Looking back at what you've been through, MCD is Fitz, Missing Scene, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24385375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars
Summary: Missing scene of Daisy having her moment after learning of Fitz's death while still coming down from the Centipede serum. Coulson and May are there for herFeels ahoy.Fills Finale Week prompt 'Location: Lighthouse'Title from Sleeping At Last's "Sorrow"
Relationships: Leo Fitz & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Melinda May & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Phil Coulson & Melinda May & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Phil Coulson & Skye | Daisy Johnson
Comments: 10
Kudos: 95
Collections: AOS Season 7 Countdown





	the cause and effect when life interferes

**Author's Note:**

> Man, only my second season 5 fic--guess that says something about my feelings towards this season. Originally, I was looking for a way to combine the lighthouse plus my Fluff Bingo prompt for 'cuddling', but once I started I realized there wasn't really room for fluff in this too. It's just sad.
> 
> The past year has had soooo much grieving for me, so I may have needed to write a fic like this more than I realized. Thanks for giving this one a look.

It’s been over a day now, and the Centipede serum that she’d plunged into her veins yesterday has still not worn off completely. Even without it, Daisy is certain that she wouldn’t have been able to sleep. Too much was happening out there.

Too much had already happened.

Emergency services had taken over the search and rescue, and on Mack’s advice, Daisy had kept a low profile. She’d been a wanted woman in the States for a year already, but now, she’d been caught on camera publicly fighting another metahuman, which she had then blasted out of the atmosphere with her hands. It was hardly a friendly world for powered people to begin with, but considering she’d just punched a hole through a freeway and then blown out a hundred stories of windows, Daisy was willing to side with Mack on this one. She’d taken the quinjet and Coulson back to the Lighthouse, put him in a monitored bed, and then flown back out with supplies for her people.

Mack directed her jet to one of the buildings holding up Talbott’s crashed spaceship, and there, as she disembarked, Daisy understood why. She’d heard the news through the comms before she’d left with Coulson. She couldn’t let herself believe it until she saw it.

Mack and May were carrying the body bag on a stretcher between them with all the solemnity of pallbearers. Daisy had slipped around May and added her strength on one side, and together, they had walked their friend onto the plane for his last ride home. On the plane, May immediately climbed into the pilot’s chair, and Daisy sat numbly in a jump seat while Mack explained what had happened. She listened with hands shaking from both the drugs and the shock, nodding silently along with his story but otherwise unable to respond.

 _We did it,_ she kept repeating to herself. _We broke the loop. We saved the world. We did it._

But, staring across the plane at the bag concealing her friend’s body, Daisy couldn’t find it in herself to feel proud.

_Anyone who signs up for this to lose friends…_

She’d been thinking of Coulson when she said those words to Talbott. She hadn’t been preparing for this.

Shifting across the space between them, Daisy knelt beside the bag and put her hand on the place where Fitz’s heart should be.

“Jemma kept going on about how we broke the loop, but there is still another Fitz out there…floating in space, waiting on the future…” Mack was saying behind her.

Daisy closed her eyes, remembering how she’d once quaked Lincoln’s heart into beating again…

“She wants to go find him…”

Numbly, Daisy reached for the zipper.

“But it doesn’t change what just happened to him…”

Fitz was covered in dust, as if he’d been too close to a powder bomb, like the kind he’d once helped Daisy set up to prank Ward, back in the day. He only had a superficial bruise on his head just below his hairline, but even with the zipper only halfway down, Daisy could see the edge of the bloodstain on his shirt. She focused on his face though, which looked so peaceful he might have only been sleeping. Shakily, she brushed the backs of her fingers across his cheek, wiping away a streak of dirt.

“I don’t know what Jemma’s going to do when she sees him,” Mack murmured behind her, sounding lost.

Pursing her lips, Daisy reached into the bag and drew out Fitz’s left hand. It was smeared with blood.

“She won’t,” Daisy said certainly as she slipped Fitz’s wedding ring off, tucking his hand back out of sight. “She won’t look.”

_She’ll focus on what she can mend and make right. She’ll put this in a manageable box, and we’ll have to face this without her…_

Daisy looked at Fitz’s face again, then leaned over and kissed his cheek. As fraught as their relationship had been for the past month, she would never have wished this on him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, smoothing a hand over his curls and barely holding back her tears. “You did good, Fitz. You did good.”

Mack didn’t make her get up until they were about to land, so Daisy spent the rest of the flight keeping vigil on the floor, resting her hand on Fitz’s cold chest and clenching his ring in her fist until it finally felt warm again.

~

And now,

Now…

Daisy wanders down another deserted hallway, turns another corner blindly, walks numbly up another flight of stairs. She has no destination and no ideas, just a lot of thoughts and feelings that she’s afraid to let loose with the power of Centipede serum behind them. On a deserted level, she runs laps until she’s dizzy, then chins herself on a doorframe until she’s broken her personal record by two hundred and her arms finally feel something close to tired. She runs again, up the entire length of the lighthouse’s emergency stairs and back down, then down and around their deep-well hangar…

And there, suddenly, she runs right into May.

“Why didn’t you go to medical?” her former S.O. says as she catches sight of Daisy’s blown-out pupils and trembling hands. “We would have gotten you an infusion…”

“I don’t…” Daisy trails off. She’d been able to be still on the plane, and then for Jemma a few hours ago in their makeshift wake as they all gathered to be there for her when she saw Fitz. But now. Now, she’s afraid to stop moving. There are too many things to outrun.

“Come with me,” May says quietly, turning away and leading Daisy out of the hangar.

It takes her a few turns to catch on, but after a moment, Daisy knows where they’re going. She almost turns and runs the opposite direction.

Coulson is back in his bed now, a cannula drizzling oxygen into his nostrils and a pulse monitor on one finger. His chest rises and falls rhythmically, and he appears to be asleep.

“He should rest,” Daisy protests quietly, stopping in the doorway when May goes in.

At the sound of her voice though, Coulson cracks an eye open.

“Can’t sleep—I’ve been waiting for your story. Now come here and tell me everything that happened after you yelled at me as you got off the jet.”

May, standing at his side with her arms folded, tells her with one look that she’s not letting Daisy run away again.

Managing to smile indulgently, Daisy forces her legs forward and draws up a chair at Coulson’s bedside. “First I should probably say, thanks for the drugs, boss. I’ll probably be coming down from this high for weeks.”

Talking helps, surprisingly, and she manages to settle down the longer she sits with Coulson, May perched on another stool beside her. May listens intently too, quiet as usual, but Daisy can tell she’s reliving the day’s events herself as she sits there.

“I told you so, didn’t I?” Coulson says with a tired but content look on his face when she’s done talking. “I told you even back then that you’d be really good at this one day.”

Back then, she’d been little more than a hacker with a nose for trouble, not even a badge-carrying agent. He’d given her more trust than she probably deserved, but maybe that was what made all the difference.

“I’m still mad at you, though,” Daisy responds, meeting Coulson’s. “I don’t care if you did it to save the world—passing that drug off to me. I’m still mad at you for making the sacrifice play.”

Coulson sighs weakly. “Well I think I can live with that.”

Daisy’s throat goes tight. “But you’re not going to.”

Coulson smiles sadly at her, then lifts one hand off the blanket-covered mattress, extending it in her direction. Daisy places her own hand in it, biting her lip and trying not to think about how his skin is barely warmer than Fitz’s was.

“You know I’m very proud of you, right?” Coulson says softly, and this only causes Daisy’s eyes to finally fill with tears. At her side, May puts a gentle hand on her back, and Daisy leans into her, receiving the woman’s embrace with her hand still clasped in Coulson’s.

Five years ago, she was a girl without a home, family, name, or direction. Everything today, everything since then, started there, with him pulling her out of her van and into the sky and giving her a chance to do some good with the guts she had. Five years ago, they were a team of six, then five.

Now they’re four, soon to be three.

She wishes Simmons was here, allowing herself to grieve with them, but that wouldn’t be her. She has work to do and a life to save, and of course they’ll all be there to help her when they’re able.

For now, though, Daisy presses into the warmth of the people around her and counts the heartbeats she can feel from both of the hearts that have held hers so faithfully through the years. Turning into May’s shoulder, Daisy lets her tears fall on all her steadiness. And just like he promised to do for them, Coulson hangs on.


End file.
